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Saturday, 12 March 2016

Acton Depot Open Day For London Transport Museum

This springs open Weekend at London Transport Museum’s Depot, West London is at 11:00 to 17:00 on 23 and 24 April 2016, We were lucky enough to be able to go to the open day last September and you can read about it here. When you go to this event you get a rare opportunity to see inside London Transport Museum’s Depot in Acton, West London. Design enthusiasts and family visitors to the Museum’s The A to Z of London Open Weekend will have the chance to look around this working Museum Depot, which holds over 320,000 artefacts from London’s transport history and is usually closed to the public.

The event will celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the Johnston typeface, created by calligrapher Edward Johnston, with themed workshops, tours, talks and family fun. We absolutely enjoyed it last time and can guarantee there will definitely be some family fun.

At The A to Z of London Open Weekend visitors can:

Find out more about Edward Johnston, the ‘father of modern calligraphy’, with a guided tour

See displays exploring how Johnston’s font has been adapted and altered over a century

View the original wooden printing blocks designed and carved by Johnston a century ago

See the Big Steam in action: The Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft has teamed up with Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre to transform an antique steam roller into a steam press. And you will see artists use this giant steam press to create new works of art

Drop-in on a calligraphy creating demonstration from lettering experts Calligraphy and Design

Listen to a talk from the author of The Golden Thread – the Story of Writing Ewan Clayton about fonts from history (on Saturday 23 April only)

Get your hands on London’s transport history and learn how the original Johnston printing blocks were made with drop-in object handling sessions for adults and children

Take a tour of the depot - perfect for transport and design enthusiasts of all ages, this was Tillys favourite thing by far last September when we were there

Little ones will love letter printing in the Johnston style, having a jump on a bouncy bus and a ride on a miniature railway

Miniature Models – explore the Museum’s collection of scale models of underground stations and check out models made by our invited guests, with some creations in Lego and Bayko

Enjoy some of London’s finest street food and refreshments from Street Dots traders

The Museum Depot, which is only open occasionally to the public, is a vault of the capital’s transport history which houses a range of objects including posters, vehicles, maps, signs and models. Highlights include:

The largest collection of London transport signage which includes samples spanning over 150 years and from bygone eras, such as signs for Waiting Rooms and Station Toilets, with examples of different font prototypes, layouts and design styles on display.

The Metropolitan Railway ‘Jubilee’ carriage, the only surviving example of a stock built by Craven Brothers of Sheffield in 1892 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The carriage was restored by London Transport Museum in 2013 and features a beautiful wooden livery with gold leaf lettering.

The last surviving Waterloo and City Tube car, which carried passengers on the line for over fifty years, from 1940 to 1993, and still features adverts from the era. A project to restore the train to its original livery is currently underway, and visitors will see it in its almost-finished form

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To enjoy this full day out in the depot, which really is ideal for enthusiasts as well as families it will cost you £10 for adults and £8 for concessions. Children and young people aged 17 and under go free (under

Getting to the depot is easy, you can take the underground to Acton Town (Piccadilly and District Lines) and it is right across the road or Acton Town is served by local buses. You can get more details if you visit www.tfl.gov.uk for services